Nico Whitmore - Prolific Researcher Reviews

The same story that everyone here and on reddit have told a million times... Spent not only one hour on the study, but an hour and 20 minutes... detailed responses that were genuine and telling of my vast experience with the subject at hand, only to receive a request to return the study after completing it with the claim that the researcher had received no data from me... Researcher is clearly shady and untrustworthy... it's no coincidence that 90% of the people (and over 15 horror stories between what is posted here and on Reddit) somehow have provided "no data" or "incomplete study". I made the mistake once prior to this on a 100gbp study, and had the same thing happen. Ever since then, I've been set on taking as many more that I am eligible for and screen-recording every moment in one take from the moment I accept it on my dashboard all the way until the completion page - and the wasted time may have finally paid off... Prolific was complicit with it for some time, but looks like that may be coming to a halt as their most recent message from support has informed me that they are looking further into the case due to the number of complaints, and verbatim: "we realize we may have lost the ball on this one, and pending further response from the researcher, they will likely be ejected from the platform. In the meantime, while we don't wish for any participant's time to be wasted, undeniable evidence we have received such as yours and several others currently are the driving force behind bringing this kind of behavior to a halt - so if you should feel the need to continue attempting to complete further work for the client, we recommend that you continue to gather further evidentiary material as you have done previously."

highest paying study I've ever seen, or done. paid out within a couple of hours

I get screened out from most of Nico's studies, but so far have completed 3 high value studies from them and they paid out within 30 minutes to 2 hours tops. No opinion here, just honest feedback. I guess some do pay off.

This researcher will approve most, if not all, submissions within a few hours of submission. But of the four studies I've completed, they asked me to return one claiming I did not complete it, which was completely untrue. I asked them to elaborate, and they did not reply. The study is in my pending queue, and I think the odds of it being auto-approved in a week or so are good, but declining to approve a study that I spent an hour completing struck me as lame. Update: they got prolific to auto-return the study, thereby violating Prolific's own rules with respect to returns and stealing an hour's worth of my data.

I have only had positive experiences with this researcher. The ai interview system is the best I've utilized yet.

unfortunately i did investigation about this researcher only after submitting without completion code and with no proofscreenshots and ofc it happened with me same as with others - Nico is asking me to return submission cause "Participant did not complete the study"

I spent an hour and 15 minutes on this study giving good quality responses during the AI interview, when finished it said interview completed and then sent me back to prolific , I immediately sent researcher message that I was not given a code and would be entering no code and just wanted to let researcher know, when I went to code submission page it said no code needed so I contacted researcher and said disregard my last message I didn't have to enter a code. The researcher then sent me a return submission message with the reason as being did not complete study, I have sent two messages that I did complete it , the interview said completed click here to return to prolific, and another message questioning why he is saying I did not complete it and to return and has not responded back at all. And seeing the other review that was left about this researcher this must be their usual thing. So this clearly looks like one to definitely avoid! I will be reporting and hopefully Prolific will see the problem here.

Spent nearly an hour on this study worth $80 doing an AI interview. I gave good quality responses and the AI even told me I would for sure receive my incentive because of my responses. I took a screenshot of the AI saying this and I also took a screenshot of the completion page which shows the url with my prolific ID and the study ID. This researcher is asked me to return the study stating that they “do not see my submission on their backend”. I told him that I have multiple screenshots to prove that I completed the study as well as his AI saying I would get my incentive . I also wrote out exactly what occurred during the interview to prove I had the knowledge of someone who completed the study in full. He is insisting that I return it. Avoid.